The Nation magazine's John Nichol's writes that American journalism is under assault and "the greatest of all threats comes when journalists fail to defend fellow reporters and editors who have come under direct attack. ... Sarah Olson, a 31-year-old independent writer and radio producer from Oakland, California, finds herself in the targets of Army prosecutors, Those prosecutors are demanding that Olson help them build the case against 1st Lt. Ehren Watada, an officer who faces a court-martial trial for expressing opposition to the war in Iraq and for refusing to deploy with a unit being dispatched to that country. ... 'It's not a reporter's job to participate in the prosecution of her own sources,' she explains. 'When you force a journalist to participate, you run the risk of turning the journalist into an investigative tool of the state.' There is no question that Olson is right. The question is whether journalists will stand with her as she defends our craft. ... I am proud to add my name to the list of signers of a statement that is not merely a defense of Sarah Olson but a reassertion of the founding principle that a free press is the essential underpinning of democracy."

George Bush meets Alexander Downer in Canberra.

The Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Alexander Downer, recently sought to downplay concerns about the mental health of an Australian citizen, David Hicks, who has been imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay since January 2002. "A visit took place just a few days ago ... and the report of that meeting was that he was healthy. There was no suggestion that he was suffering from mental illness," Downer said in a radio interview. Downer refused to disclose who it was that had met Hicks. The Australian reports that "the assessment of Hicks's health was made by the public affairs officer at the US embassy during a three-minute meeting on January 12 where Hicks refused to speak." The official was Scott Weinhold. Downer claimed that criticism of him for implying that Weinhold was "a psychologist or some doctor with special qualifications" was unjustified.

A U.S. federal court judge has extended an injunction banning groups in the U.S. from adding a weblink to leaked internal documents on Eli Lilly's schizophrenia and bipolar disorder drug, Zyprexa. Despite the injunction, the documents have been distributed around the world from websites outside the U.S. Lilly also has problems on another front. The New York Times reports that "lawyers from the consumer protection division of the Illinois attorney general's office demanded that Lilly hand over marketing materials, e-mail messages, and other documents with information about promotion" of the drug. Vermont government investigators have made a similar order. At issue is whether Lilly hid information on weight gain and the associated risk of diabetes and also promoted the use of the drug for patients who didn't have schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.

During the struggle against South African apartheid, journalist Alistair Sparks used to visit the United States to "have my batteries recharged," inspired by "the idealism of the Kennedy years, the civil rights campaign and all that followed." Now, he writes, the roles have reversed: "My own country has emerged, albeit still with many faults, as a beacon of racial reconciliation and co-existence that gives me at least some sense of personal fulfillment in my evening years, while my old moral lodestar, the U.S., has slipped into an abyss of moral degeneracy, of political lies and casuistry, of torture and cruelty and of a contempt for human rights and human decency that violates your own supposedly sacred Constitution. For me emotionally, it is as though the United States has become the old South Africa." Sparks is particularly dismayed by "the craven obsequiousness of the U.S. media" with regard to the war in Iraq. "On my several visits to the U.S. in the course of this war I have been disgusted by all the cheerleading for your 'brave boys in Iraq,' the flagwaving and the craven desire to be seen as patriotic that wiped out the journalistic duty to ask the tough questions about why the war was being fought, who told the lies, or even to portray the carnage that was taking place inside Iraq."